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Analysis Of Alex Gendel's Poem 'With Her Eyes Open'

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“With Her Eyes Open,” a poem by Alex Citadel is a piece that expresses the value of clarity by using the symbol, an eyeglass, that can view the whole world in a very fine detail. Citadel uses paradoxes, metaphors, as well as extended metaphors to portray the idea that even when people think they live clearly, their eyes can deceive them, fogging their reality, and stopping them from seeing the beauty of the world.
Citadel uses paradoxes in his poem to show that many people may have their eyes literally open, but they don't fully understand what they are actually seeing. In these lines, Citadel talks about how some people describe the eyeglass as what it actually is (a piece of sky), but not what it can show, such as giving one who understands its value, a deeper view. He states, “... by those who will never see her (the eyeglass), / for they are looking, / but with their eyes closed,” (Citadel 6-8). Sometimes, people can only see the surface of things because they don't try hard enough to look deeper or …show more content…

People can see when reading the poem, the eyeglass has the knowledge of all existence and knows the details from the veins on a leaf to constellations far away, making the Earth a perfect match for Citadel’s overall metaphor. He says, “Her chuckle is without falsity, / and she shows just a glimpse into the beauty that is / seeing with her eyes open,” (Citadel 32 - 34). The world may only be seen in glimpses, and although just a glimpse may be confusing at first, it is an important piece of a puzzle that can make the fog disappear and clarity emerge. Moreover, it is a person's decision to take the risk of opening their eyes to see those glimpses given by the eyeglass, but it is also the person’s obligation to swim below the surface, to understand what precious pieces can match because those could one day finish the most important puzzle; the

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Annie Dillard’s essay “Sight into Insight” emphasizes how one must live in the moment and not sway towards others opinions in order to gain accurate observations on a situation. She uses nature as a prominent theme in her essay to represent the thought of looking past the superficial obvious in order to go deeper to where the hidden beauty rests. Dillard wants the reader to realize in order to observe clearly you have to live in the moment and let go of the knowledge you think you know on the situation. Dillard uses the example of her “walking with a camera vs walking without one” (para.31) and how her own observations differed with each. When she walked with the camera she “read the light” (para.31), and when she didn’t “light printed” (para.31).

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